The training course took place on September 26th in the meeting room of the Association of Agronomists and Foresters of the Roma Province, where also Federbio has its Roman office. The Association included this course among those officially giving “training credits” to the participating agronomists. The training was focused on the role of organic farming in the risk prevention in agriculture, and the related monitoring methods and analysis. Since, in the latest years, the risk prevention in agriculture has been deeply connected to the climate change effects, the Life Organiko activities and first results have been considered of great interest for the training agenda. The speakers involved were: Roberto Calabresi – from Kyoto Club – who coordinated the session; Donato Ferrucci – Responsible for the area of Central Italy for BioAgriCert; Dr. Claudia Fontana and Dr. Silvia Socciarelli – from CREA; Dr. Stefano Vaccari from ICQRF.

Roberto Calabresi, Coordinator of Kyoto Club’s Agriculture and forests Working Group, introduced and illustrated the Life Organiko project, emphasizing, considering the past years’ heavy climate change effects on agriculture, the importance of OF and its contribution in adaptation and mitigation efforts, while showing the first project results.

Donato Ferrucci, the Responsible for the area of Central Italy of BioAgriCert – an international Certification and Control Body – provided and exhaustive view of the latest updates in the legislation on organic farming, particularly the Italian Parliament DGLS n.20/2018 of the last February and the latest EU Regulation 2018/848.

Dr. Claudia Fontana Dr. Silvia Socciarelli, researchers at CREA – Council for Agricultural Research and Economics – analyzed in detail the different aspects of climate change. They started with the general definitions and key aspects, followed by the effects, describing those who are not always directly connected with the climate change. Finally, most of the
presentation was dedicated on how climate change affects the agriculture by increasing the risks, and how to prevent or minimize them.

Dr. Stefano Vaccari from ICQRF – Department of Central Inspectorate for Fraud Repression and Quality Protection of The Agri-Food Products and Foodstaffs, which is the main Italian sanctioning authority. He outlined the different activities of ICQRF and the way it cooperates with the other Public Authorities, showing also the results of the 2017 Control Report. Later on, he focused on the organic sector and its numbers, and provided several concrete examples of fraud ICQRF faced in the last years.

The training ended with an intense session of Q & A with the participants, and many of them integrated with their own experiences and inputs the topics presented by the trainers.